Mavradoxa – Sojourners (2016)

Genre: Atmospheric Black Metal / Post Black Metal

Country Of Origin: USA (Rochester, NY)

Track List:
1. Tempest of Dreams
2. Mist of the Tides
3. Enshrouded in Dawn
4. My Bones Become the Roots
5. Cenotaph

Bandcamp Streaming/Download

Mavradoxa recently released their first full-length album entitled “Sojourners.” The aptly titled album will definitely let you reside inside it for a while. It takes you away to a new place while it’s playing. Mavradoxa is from Rochester, New York, a city surrounded by woods and water, so it comes as no surprise that the music gives you that exact feeling. Dense forests and frozen Lake Ontario come to mind through vivid atmospheres painted by the guitars. The guitar work on this album is very interesting for a black metal album. Instead of your traditional tremolo riffs and blast beats, Mavradoxa opts for mid-tempo plodding guitar riffs that seem to fit somewhere between Agalloch and Alcest. In fact, Mavradoxa uses tremolo so infrequently that it really highlights those melodies when they do finally break out. Those melodic tremolo riffs wind their way into your head and stick there long after the album is done. In general the band sounds extremely in sync. Many times the guitar work is so tied to the drumming that it offers additional freedom for the bass to wander and bring in very memorable bass lines instead of being drowned out like so many black metal bands chose to do or being forced to accompany the drumming the entire album. If you’re looking to get sucked into a black metal forest Mavradoxa’s “Sojourners” is an album you need to check out. This is definitely a band to watch out for if their first album is this immersive, powerful, and polished.